the school-room scene, father and daughter were locked in each other's arms in the old log-cabin at Napa. Time swept by. This girl grew up to blooming womanhood, California changed from an almost uninhabited waste to an Eldorado, Napa Valley became a paradise. The young mountaineer had become an old pioneer, and the old pioneer a millionaire; the little orphan a belle and an heiress to his fortune. Sought by many, she accepted the hand of an honorable and highly esteemed gentleman, who came to San Francisco in 1849, and who still resides there, esteemed and respected by all the community, and who at one time represented that city in the State Senate. The daughter of this marriage is the heroine of my story."

"And what about the hero?" exclaimed my companion.

"Ah!" said I, "he is a native of Wales, also, and his accomplished wife, as I have shown, sprung from the same family. The currents were widely separated for more than two centuries, but like the crystal waters of yonder river, they have come together at last, in unison, after a career so checkered."

"But," rejoined my comrade, "you have not mentioned his name."

"Nor do I intend so to do,” I answered. "Modern etiquette forbids it. But if you will read the history of the United States on your return home to your country, you will find his kinsmen figuring therein as Captain John Paul and Commodore Ap Catesby.”

I

"Fathoms deep the ship doth lie, Wreath'd with ocean weed and shell, The cod slips past with round white eye, Still and deep the shadows lie,

Dusky as a forest dell: Tangled in the twisted sail,

With the breathing of the sea, Stirs the man who told this tale, Staring upward dreamilie."

T was at Seacomb, a diminutive fishing hamlet on the south coast of England, that I met John Wilde, and it was there, in his lonely hut, one stormy winter night, that he told me a story which I think ought to be recorded.

"I was born here nearly fifty years ago, and came of a race of fishermen, who have starved here at Seacomb during three hundred years, all poor as the rocks they lived among, and wellnigh as ignorant, save one, my great grandfather, who ventured so far out of the beaten track of his ancestors as to do a little smuggling, and thereby managed to scrape a few pounds together,

with which he bought a little piece of ground and erected this hut upon it. He then retired from the fishing busi ness-being the first and last of my race who has been a man of leisureand died six months afterward from over-indulgence in his own contraband whisky. I was the only child of my parents. My father was a great strong hard-working man, kind to his wife, and after his manner affectionate to me. But he was a man of few words and of a very reserved disposition. He had an idea that my great grandfather had died very rich, and that his concealed treasure would turn up some day. My moth er, dear heart, doated on me. I was the one bright star on her dim road of life.

"Of the first twelve years of my life there is little to be said. I grew up wild as the sea-birds, fearless as they of the great waters that rolled and roared continually before me. My father was one

the shocks received at setting out, and could scarcely drag his weight along. Arrived at home, my father went to bed at once, and the child was soon brought to by the exertions of my mother and a neighbor.

"How can I describe the babe as she lay there before the fire! Her image, God knows, is engraved upon my heart. But how shall I describe her? She was about seven years old; her hair of golden brown lay in disheveled masses about her fair pale face, and its metallic lustre shot flame for flame against the fire; her features were of that refined and delicate type which can only be produced by many generations of gentle birth. But why should I attempt to describe her? I can never do her beauty justice. I know that, in my eyes, accustomed only to the brown coarse features of my playmates, she 'did not seem to be a mortal child. That was the first night in which her face entered my dreams; since then it has rarely been absent from them.

"At day-break I was out upon the beach again to see the wreck. The storm had subsided, but the sea still ran high. The ship had been literally battered into fragments, which lay scattered all along the shore. A great number of people were busy gathering, the different articles as they were washed up, and piling them beyond the reach of the waves. At some little distance were a number of bodies lying in a row upon the sand, and partially covered with a sail. This sight so horrified me that I turned to go up to the house again, when I noticed that, as a wave receded a few yards from me, it left a small square object behind it. I hastened to rescue it, and found it to be a tin box about a foot long and six inches wide, securely locked, and having a handle on top, and what I suppose were letters-I could not read then-on its side. This I picked up, and carried to my mother.

When I reached the house I found the child in bed and sleeping soundly; father was also in bed tossing about and moaning painfully, for he was sadly hurt. Mother sat by his side bathing his fevered brow, and looking very pale and worn. I showed her the box, and she bade me put it on the shelf for the present, and be quiet.

"During the next two days there was a great stir at Seacomb. Many strangers came down from the great cities inland to identify and carry away the dead and to see after the rescued cargo. On the third night one of the passengers who had been saved, an elderly gentleman, came to our house and inquired for my mother. He had heard, he said, that she had a box which had been washed up from the wreck. He had lost a similar box, containing many valuable papers and some money. If this was his, his name would be upon it. Would she let him see it? Mother showed it to him, and it proved to be his. He told us the whole story of the wreck, which I need not repeat, and said the ship was from the East Indies, and had many passengers aboard. He then opened the box and took from it a bundle of papers and a roll of banknotes. They were very slightly damaged, as the box was nearly water-tight. The former he replaced, and the latter he handed to mother, begging her to accept the money as a token of his gratitude for the recovery of the papers. At first mother seemed inclined to refuse; but he pressed the gift upon her, saying that he was rich, that the papers were worth a hundred times the amount, and that the money would help to cure her husband. Then she looked at my er's white face and took the money. Before leaving he stepped up to the cot in which the child lay sleeping.

fath

"Poor little motherless one,' he said, as he looked at her, 'you have lost more than any of us.'

"Nothing,' he answered, 'except that she was on board with her mother, a stately pleasant lady, named Mrs. Has tings, and an East Indian nurse. She will doubtless be fetched away from here before long. Poor child, hers has been a terrible loss.' With that he left, and we never saw him again.

"So things went on for some weeks, and still the child was not fetched. But she gradually regained her strength, and would have done so rapidly had she not pined and cried so unceasingly for her dead mother. In the meantime my poor father died of the injuries he had sustained, which so weakened my mother that she took to her bed and would have died, too, had it not been for the care taken of her by the neighbors. Ah, we were a sad household in those days!

"So the months rolled on and were gathered into years, and still the child remained with us. 'Waif' we called her, her own name sounding strange and unhomelike to my ears. After my father's death, a brother of my mother's came to live with us, and thus things went on much as of old, except that the fair young face made sunshine in the hitherto gloomy household. Not that the child was merry-on the contrary, she was sad and quiet-but her sweet gentle disposition was something foreign to Seacomb, and we cherished her as an exotic flower. My mother grew to love her as her own child, and she grew to love my mother as her own parent. How gracious, how good she was to me, who worshiped her. We were constantly together when I was not fishing, and in the long evenings she would tell me what she knew of the strange land she was born in or had lived in ever since she could remember; of the great elephants and the gorgeous birds, of the mighty forests, of the palms, and wonderful fruits and flowers. But she could recollect little enough, poor

ed, she said, with her father and mother, and many servants and many soldiers; and her father was a soldier and was killed, and her mother and she were coming to England to live, when the wreck happened; and then she would cover her face with her little hands and cry bitterly. But gradually she grew to forget these things, or at least to speak less of them. And so the years went on and she became one of us.

"But my story grows long, and I must hasten on to its close. It is needless to say that I grew to love her with the whole strength of my heart. And she knew it, and in her gentle way returned my love; but I think hers was more the love of a sister for a brother than the stronger passion I would have given my life to see. My mother looked upon our union as a settled thing, and its accomplishment was the aim and end of her life. But there was something stood between us of which I only was aware. I was constantly oppressed with a sense of my own inferiority when in the presence of Waif. There was an indefinable air about her that stamped her as my superior; no matter how gentle, how loving she was to me, I always felt that she somehow lowered herself when she spoke to me. I struggled hard to rid myself of this feeling, but could not; she was ever the delicate lily-I the coarse sea-weed; she the lady, no matter how homely her garb-I the rustic boor. Worship her -ay, love her-I might, but mate with her-never!

"One night when my mother, in Waif's absence, twitted me on my pale looks, laughingly saying something about 'lovesickness,' I astonished her by exclaiming suddenly, 'Mother, Waif can never be my wife!' and bursting into tears. Then, in answer to her anxious inquiries, I told her all my secret—how that Waif knew everything, and I nothing; how that she was a lady, and I a fisher

boy. 'But, my son, you must be crazed,' she said; 'Waif can do little more than read or write herself, and as for being a lady, I should like to see the lady who is too good for my brave big-hearted John. Has the child herself put this into your head, my son?'

"No, no, mother,' I answered, quickly; 'how can you wrong her by such a thought! But I know it, I feel it; and while I feel it I would sooner die than ask her to mate with me.'

"Then mother laughed again, and said, kissing me: 'Well, well, John, you are only sixteen, and she is a mere child; time enough to talk about marrying a half-dozen years from now, and by then you will have outgrown this foolish crotchet.' But for all her affected cheerfulness she seemed concerned and disappointed; it was evident I had set her thinking. A few days after this she called me to her, and said: 'John, I have been considering what you said to me the other day, and I have found a remedy.'

"What is it, mother?'

"You complained of being beneath Waif, and were troubled because you knew nothing. You shall be her equal, if learning can make you so, and you are willing to learn. You remember the money the gentleman gave us for saving his box? Well, except what I spent to bury your father, I have got that money yet; I kept it all for you-and Waif. You shall go to the great city, John, and learn, and be her equal. I have spoken to the clergyman over at Pencliffe about it, and have shown him the money, and he says that though it is not much, yet you are so used to a hard life that it will be enough, and he has promised to arrange everything for you.'

"I was too much confused to replybut there, I will not trouble you with details. Suffice it to say, I went, though the parting from Waif and mother was a terrible trial. The poor girl clung to

me and begged me not to go; you see she did not know why I wanted to learn. She said she should be afraid of me when I came back, I should know so much, and finally she made me promise to come down to Seacomb as often as I could.

"This was the beginning of the end. For five years I labored day and night as few men have labored; and during all that time I could only spare time and money enough to visit Seacomb twice, though I wrote very often. At first it was terrible work, and my progress was very slow. I had to begin at the very bottom of things, and my talent, I fear, was not great; but by degrees I improv ed, and it came easier toward the end. I lived upon next to nothing, but I was used to that. At the end of the fifth year I came down to Seacomb for the last time before my final return, which was to be twelve months later. Then it was that I spoke out to Waif, and she promised to be my wife.

"The day before I left I was walking with my betrothed along a retired part of the beach, beyond the heads up yonder, when we were approached by a stranger, to me at least, who came down from the cliffs to meet us. He was a tall well-built man, of some thirty or thirty-five years, fashionably but plainly dressed. As he drew nearer, I saw that he was handsome, but looked rather dissipated; he was evidently a gentleman, as far as the social sense of the word goes. I was about to bid him good-day and pass on, when to my astonishment he raised his hat gracefully to Waif, and, coming up to us, offered her his hand as if he were an old acquaintance.

"Ah, Waif, good-morning,' he said; 'pray who is this friend of yours?'

"Why, this is John-John Wildewhom I have told you so much about. John, this is Captain Ogilvie.'

"I was utterly confounded, and stood staring stupidly at him. He smiled lan